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North East Trusts Making a Difference in Maternity Care

A local NHS Trust was invited to speak at a National Maternity and Neonatal Health Safety Collaborative Learning Event in London last week for a second successive year.

North Tees and Hartlepool NHS Foundation Trust were invited to present findings surrounding their quality improvement achievements and their work with local partners in developing a bespoke MatNeo Local Learning System to support the ambitions of maternity outcomes across the region.

Dr Elaine Gouk, Clinical Director for Obstetrics and Gynaecology explains more ‘the National Maternal and Neonatal Health Safety Collaborative, funded by NHS Improvement was launched in 2017. Our Trust was one of the first 44 organisations in England to sign up to the collaborative. It is essentially a three year programme that supports improvement in the quality and safety of maternity and neonatal units across England. Our aim is to contribute to the national ambition of reducing the national rates of maternal and neonatal deaths, stillbirths and brain injuries that occur during or soon after birth by 20% by 2020’.

The Trust works closely with the Academic Health Science Network for the North East and North Cumbria with the aim of promoting engagement, collaboration and innovation with the initiative in ways that benefit patients and public. The MatNeo Local Learning System is now established in the region and holds quarterly learning events with providers from across the area, to share findings and best practice surrounding key developments within maternity and neonatal teams.

Dr Gouk continues ‘coming together to talk about our work with this initiative is fundamental in ensuring that we are sharing our findings with other providers and in turn understanding their findings in order to help to achieve the overall ambitions of reducing avoidable harm and providing improved outcomes for all of our mothers and babies and their families.

North Tees and Hartlepool was delighted to be able to participate as an early adapter for this project and to be invited back for a second successive year to present our work and our regional model for sustaining collaboration and learning. This year North Tees & Hartlepool were joined by our North Eastern neighbours in Northumbria in being asked to present at the national event, which is affirmation that our region is making a difference.

During 2016-17 there were a reported 636,401 deliveries in NHS hospitals across England. Charitable organisation Tommy’s report that one in every 225 births ends in a stillbirth in the UK – equating to nine babies every day.

Dr Gouk concludes ‘it is our absolute responsibility as a leading health care provider for this region to ensure we are fully equipped with the knowledge and tools to work to make avoidable complications during pregnancy, childbirth and the neonatal period a thing of the past. This quality improvement initiative allows an even more open approach than ever before to working collaboratively across our region with the aim of improving outcomes for the North East and nationally.’